Each person in Thailand consumes an average of around 14.9 kg of chicken per year. Peter Cooper LICENSED UNDER CC 4.0

In Thailand, that the mountains of grain needed to produce chicken-feed has caused more than 5 million acres of agricultural and forest land to be cleared for maize farming. And maize farmland has exponentially expanded during the past 10 years. …
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The process of design thinking allows us to critically think through the steps involved in reconstructing something worthwhile that is fit-for-context, and fit-for-purpose. What we hope to accomplish at the end of this process and exercise are workable and feasible prototypes of the one-stop service centre and testing them with potential users until we get it right! …
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Each year thousands of tonnes of electronic waste is disposed of incorrectly globally, and in China. Photo: UNDP China.

Emails went unanswered, or came back with short replies. We began to sense recalcitrance from Baidu's somewhat muted response, and we didn’t like it. Couldn’t they see the value in our innovative emergency shelter mapping initiative? Why weren’t they coming on board? …
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What happens when you bring together members of municipal governments, urban experts, civil society and staff from various countries to brainstorm on addressing urban challenges? Sounds like a typical meeting, but wait... While city planners interacted and learnt from each other in tackling similar problems, what was far from obvious at the time was how they could transfer a successful practice, product or service from one context (say Beijing, China) to another (say Dhaka, Bangladesh)? And by different context, I mean how language, culture, history and society come together in an appreciably different way to render simple ‘replication’ of a service inapplicable, or, at the very least, a significant challenge. After all, we wouldn’t have to look far, or dig deep, to see the failed attempts of replicating a ‘good practice’ in a context other than its home. Taking our cue from design-thinking Design thinking allows us to unpack, reimagine and reconstruct a practice to see in what shape or form it might work in a different context. In our concrete case, Bangladesh counterparts are keen to adopt China’s successful one-stop-shop social service centres. The problem: urban residents in Bangladesh from low-income backgrounds find it hard to avail the social
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Eventually, videoconferencing facilities could be used to enable citizens from across Bhutan and parliamentarians to meet virtually to discuss issues of concern. Photo Courtesy of National Assembly of Bhutan

As an advocate for innovation, UNDP is leading the development of a Virtual Zomdu, (Zomdu: a meeting of residents of villages or communities), together with project partners in Bhutan. …
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